Going Against
“It’s not that I go against laws, well, not really. I might act contrary to unlawful laws, but not to my neighbor’s requests. They asked it nice enough. What has become of local independence? I recommend we all buy, and/or reread Peter Miller’s book, “Vanishing Vermonters: Loss of a Rural Culture. I read a little bit from it, every day. Too many reasonable people have become “tools of the oppressor”, without even knowing, or having the ability to check themselves. We’ve been lulled into a mass media complacency, that masquerades as “local radio”. It’s anything but locally based. However, you’d have to spend some time looking behind the issues, to come to this conclusion. Most won’t and prefer Netflix during their leisure hours. I put in my hours today. I had to drive behind a “Closed” sign, and bump along behind some greenhouses, to find six parsley plants. The ease with which I used to shop, educating myself as I walked isles of ground cloth, has ground to a halt. In this perverse world some might call “The Twilight Zone”, I must make an appointment a month in advance, to view shrubs, six packs, cow shit and shovels. Needless to say, I’ve done no shopping. I would have enjoyed spending countless hundreds at my local nursery, but instead, I avoid the ordeal. There are beautiful blessings still, to be sure. The story about how the hay wagon cut loose and nearly plowed into the farmhouse, is still to be enjoyed from a patch of overgrown bedstraw & poppies, told by the resident farmer. I’m glad the housekeeper will be waking at 1 am, to drive into northern Maine with her husband, to claim a week off. Despite her bad knees, she is still happy to climb up ill placed flagstones, to a precarious planting of tomatoes. Where the old greenhouse was struck by a renegade round bale, I’ve been finding fragments of pots, and chokecherry starts. I don’t mind moving things. If I can make something survive, I will. And so, why would you doubt me. When I say we are healthy Americans, caught up in some devious deception, why wouldn’t you give it a minute? As I said, I’ve put in my hours. I’ve done hard physical work for my whole adult life, and applied more than the required mental powers to trying to help us navigate out of a mess. Don’t just replay all the things you’ve heard. It’s so much more exciting to consider we’ve been had. And it’s been going on for a long, long, time.”